What are the benefits of distro-hopping?

[Shibblet]

There are a lot of people that do this... Distro-Hopping.

Most people use the term in a derogatory manner... "Dude, quit distro-hopping, and just pick one!"

But what are some of the benefits that can come from out of distro-hopping?

I'll start:

Most "Distro-hoppers" have all of their personal data (music, photos, files, etc.) backed up, because they might reinstall an OS at any moment.

[deadflowr]

A benefit would be increasing an overall skill set.

Most "Distro-hoppers" have all of their personal data (music, photos, files, etc.) backed up, because they might reinstall an OS at any moment.

That applies to everyone though.
Or should.

[Rubi1200]

Curiosity and learning or improving skills were and are my main reasons.

However, my understanding of distro-hopping is more in the sense of trying new distros rather than constantly changing my main driver.

I used to do bare metal installs on test partitions until I discovered the joys of virtual machines.

[Shibblet]

I used to do bare metal installs on test partitions until I discovered the joys of virtual machines.

I always find that VM's are more limiting than bare metal. I want to know performance differences as well.

[deadflowr]

Virtual machines give an advantage of seeing whether or not they're worth it first.
What's the point of testing performance if everything else about it is garbage?

[Shibblet]

Virtual machines give an advantage of seeing whether or not they're worth it first.
What's the point of testing performance if everything else about it is garbage?

Good point.

I would only say "time." After you do an install of the OS and then like it... you have to install it again.
Fortunately for Linux OS's, they don't take too much time.

[Frogs Hair]

I learned much about package management commands on non apt systems. Testing rolling releases for my old computers has been learning experience also. I've reached the point with the old computers that I don't want to clean install or upgrade on a Ubuntu base.

[Tadaen_Sylvermane]

Each distro does something a little different. That being said after distro hopping for most of the last 10+ years I finally gave up. I was looking for some perfect distro that could do everything I needed without fail. It doesn't exist. The closest I've found at this point, and been quite happy with is Fedora Silverblue + Distrobox. Each person will be different though. I was on Debian Bookworm but I wanted a static system that wasn't any different from any other installation of it. Despite being newer software compared to Debian due to the nature of the Atomic concept and how bugs don't really slip by as easily I'd argue this has been more stable than even Debian Bookworm was for me in regards to the occasional app crash and such. I'd been testing it for some time but never went all in till recently. No complaints and the system is identical to every other installation at the core so I don't have to worry about some random combination of packages causing problems, regardless of how remote such an occurrence is.

[guiverc]

Curiosity and learning

This is where I'd likely end up.

Installing a different OS on a system I had trouble with in the early days, would make me think one distro was superior to another, yet in time I came to the conclusion they're all GNU/Linux, and the difference was just newer/older kernel or other software in the stack that was in the distro, and the distro itself meant ~little.

Next thing was just it'd help me learn other setup options. Sure I could have explored various github sites, or articles written about new/other software, but it was often when I'd installed another distro that had that software pre-configured, that I really appreciated how that software could help me.

I see distro hopping as just a step in the learning process.

If I'd not distro-hopped long ago, I'd likely never have tried Ubuntu, and it wouldn't be my daily driver today.

[TheFu]

Every distro does something well. If you don't go shopping, how will you learn that something new exists and that you like it better?
The more exposure someone has to different distros, the more they can learn about their preferred distro as well. Those little differences really are pretty small for the most part. If you are going into software development or systems administration, having more exposure to the different distros only makes you even more employable. It shows potential bosses or clients that you aren't a 1-trick pony like all those people who concentrate on 1 OS and only 1 OS.

If all you know is a hammer, then all the issues you come to start to look like nails. Would you hire a carpenter who only shows up to work with 1 hammer?

When I consider someone a "distro hopper", to me that means they use an OS for 1-6 months, then wipe it and move onto the next one. Installing a distro for 2 days is hardly distro-hopping - it is more like window shopping in a mall.

And in a few years as your tastes change, you might remember a specific distro fondly enough to return to it. That's how I arrived on Ubuntu. I was running SuSE or Madrake just before on my desktop and RH before that and Slackware before that and SLS before that. If I never left SLS to slackware, I'd probably still be using OS/2 at home.